Governments last week reached agreement on a strategy to raise an additional $200 billion each year to better protect the world’s flora and fauna by 2030.
Delegates met in Rome for the resumption of the UN Biodiversity Conference to hammer out an agreement at COP16.2 after attempts to reach a deal on financing fell short last November.
It is hoped that the hard-won decisions made by parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity will shore up biodiversity and fragile ecosystems which are bearing the brunt of increased conflict, deforestation, mining, toxic waste dumping and other environmental impacts worldwide.
“We very much welcome this announcement,” the UN Secretary-General’s spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said. “We need to mobilise at least $200 billion dollars a year by 2030 to close the global biodiversity finance gap.”
However, discussions on who pays to protect the Earth’s biodiversity have long been a point of contention, while more than a million plant and animal species are now threatened with extinction.
“These days of work in Rome have demonstrated the commitment of the parties to advance the implementation of the [Kunming-Montreal] Global Biodiversity Framework,” said COP16 president Susana Muhamad, referring to the landmark 2022 agreement and underscoring “the collective effort to reach consensus of key issues that were left pending in Cali.”
Delegates worked through following days of intense negotiation and reached decisions on outstanding issues including biodiversity finance, planning, monitoring, reporting and review.
Negotiators also agreed on a set of indicators to measure global and national progress towards implementing the Global Biodiversity Framework.
The framework was finalized a little over two years ago – a historic UN-driven agreement to guide global action on nature through to 2030, which was hashed out at meetings in Kunming, China, and Montreal, Canada, in 2022.
The Global Biodiversity Framework aims to address biodiversity loss, restore ecosystems and protect the rights of Indigenous Peoples, who suffer disproportionately from biodiversity loss and environmental degradation. UN News
The global framework also contains concrete measures to halt and reverse nature loss, including protection measures covering 30 percent of the planet and 30 percent of degraded ecosystems by 2030.
Currently only 17 percent of land and around eight percent of marine areas are protected.
“Only by working together can we make peace with nature a reality,” said Ms. Muhamad.
Astrid Schomaker, executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, said the positive outcome in Rome shows that “multilateralism works” and is “the vehicle to build the partnerships needed to protect biodiversity and move us towards peace with nature”.
After intense negotiations, parties to the convention agreed on a way forward in terms of resource mobilization with a view to close the global biodiversity finance gap and achieve the target of at least $200 billion a year by 2030.
This includes working to improve existing financial tools, especially to provide resources for developing countries, under the temporary leadership of UN agencies and partners.
“We now have a clear mandate” for implementation, Ms. Schomaker said. “As we do this and implement the other supporting elements for resource mobilisation, the world will have given itself the means to close the biodiversity finance gap.” UN News